


I Have a Method

by LetItRaines



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, CS January Joy, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 21:35:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17271548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetItRaines/pseuds/LetItRaines
Summary: Finding your neighbor drunk and nearly passed out in the snow isn’t exactly a great way to become friends. But that’s exactly how Killian Jones becomes more of a friend to Emma Swan than he has been in their years of knowing each other. And it’s exactly how the both of them learn to be a little less alone.





	I Have a Method

She hates the snow.

 

It’s cold and wet and people don’t know how to drive in it.

 

She gets that visibility is low and there’s black ice and all of those awful things that happen in the snow to make the driving difficult, but it’s not totally necessary for everyone to lose their collective shit. And they don’t just lose their collective shit over driving or the negative things about snow. They lose their collective shit over the positive things.

 

People bundle up and run out into the frozen water – but not, like, frozen water that’s as hard and as solid as ice. – and lay down in it, soaking their clothes and bodies and likely catching pneumonia from the way they’re literally sitting in freezing water. It’s pretty, but it’s ridiculous. And it loses its appeal right as someone throws a snowball at her that ends up having tiny pieces of rocks inside. That _hurts_.

 

Mostly, she just hates being cold.

 

Yes, the clothes are cute and she gets to wear her favorite boots and a beanie that has a little puffball on top, but she’s freezing.

 

All. The. Time.

 

And it’s not like they’re even experiencing negative temperatures here but still.

 

She’s on her way home from work, the walk home from the station short and sweet, when she sees a pair of legs sticking out from the snow.

 

Is she living in some kind of snow-covered version of Wizard of Oz?

 

Winter of Oz?

 

Blizzard of Oz?

 

She’s cautious as she steps toward the figure, not knowing what she’s going to find, and as soon as she gets close enough, she sees that it’s Killian Jones laying in the snow with red tipped ears and a nose so cold he may as well be Rudolph.

 

It’s January. Rudolph is late.

 

“Jones,” she grumbles, squatting down next to him and waiting for him to respond.

 

He smiles, his eyes slowly fluttering open only to reveal the usually clear blue as a hazy, muted blue, nearly gray. “Hello, beautiful.”

 

“Are you drunk?”

 

His hand waves in the air while his lips form into a sloppy smirk. She swears he tries to wink, but both eyes close. “I may have imbibed in a few libations, and it seems that I may have fallen down on my way home.”

 

“Can you stand up?”

 

“I can.”

 

“Then why don’t you?”

 

“I’m comfortable,” he hums, his voice slurring the slightest bit, “but I am a bit chilled, love. Should probably go home and take a warm shower. Would you like to join me?”

 

She sighs, the realization that she’s going to have to help him home coming to her and filling her with annoyance. She spends enough time dealing with drunks and helping drunks as Storybrooke’s sheriff. She doesn’t need to be carting a drunk middle school teacher home at eight in the evening. But Killian is not a drunk, never has been unless he’s good at hiding it, and she’s not about to leave someone who’s a good citizen out in the cold to die when she can easily cart him home. Hell, he lives three doors down from her in their apartment complex.

 

“Alright, Jones. Let’s get you home.”

 

“I thought you’d…never ask.”

 

It takes a hell of a lot of stumbling and readjusting and carrying one hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight at least half a mile, but eventually she gets him into her apartment, dragging him to her bed and flopping him down while encouraging him to slip out of his clothes. That gets her a look, one that she knows would usually be flirty, but this one is mostly just sad. But she does get him out of his wet clothes and into some of David’s old sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt she has that’s a little too snug on him, hugging the hard lines of his stomach and arms that she saw while helping him change. It takes some maneuvering to get him under the covers, but she eventually does, tucking him in like a child and putting her beanie over his red-tipped ears before she walks into her bathroom and falls back against the counter.

 

“I’m going to have to sleep on the couch, aren’t I?” she whispers to herself, shutting her eyes and taking several deep breaths to calm herself down.

 

This is not how she wanted her night to go, but it’s probably not how Killian wanted his night to go either. It’s just one night. She can do this for one night, and then they can go back to acknowledging each other when they see each other and occasionally hanging out when they’re both at Mary Margaret and David’s. Sighing, she turns the sink faucet on and begins removing her makeup before washing her face and pulling her hair up into a bun. She doesn’t care how she looks, popping her contacts out and sliding on her black-framed glasses, and that’s exactly the mindset she keeps when she pulls on a pair of pajama pants with snowmen on them – Mary Margaret bought them for her for Christmas because they were ‘cute’ – and an old sweatshirt from college.

 

When she exits the bathroom, Killian’s sitting up in bed but still wrapped up, and as she gets closer, she sees that his eyes aren’t as glazed over as they’ve been for the past hour.

 

“Swan, I want…I want the…do you have coffee?”

 

“I do, but you probably need water and advil or something.”

 

He shakes his head furiously, her beanie rocking on top of his head. “No, no, coffee. I have a method.”

 

“A method? Since when do you get drunk enough to have a method?”

 

“Just the one day a year.”

 

“Yeah, and why the one day a year?”

 

“Tis the day my brother died.”

 

All of the blood in her head rushes to the rest of her body as the realization of what he said hits her. She didn’t know he had a brother. He’s never mentioned it before, but who brings up their dead brother to a neighbor? No one. But now he’s in her bed, mostly still drunk, and telling her that he gets drunk once a year on the anniversary of his brother’s death.

 

Fuck.

 

“Killian, I’m – ” She tentatively places her hand on where she knows is his thigh under her flowery comforter. “I’m sorry. I’ll get you the coffee.”

 

“Thank you,” he slurs, a single tear escaping his eye.

 

She turns on her coffee pot, letting it percolate and allowing the scent to fill her apartment, while rummaging through her medicine drawer – it’s like a cabinet but not – to see if she has any advil. She doesn’t, but she has aspirin. It works too in the grand scheme of suffering through hangovers. The coffee finishes brewing, and she pours him a cup, pockets the medicine, and grabs a Gatorade out of the fridge since he really needs to be drinking water or something and not coffee that’ll dehydrate him further. But hey, dude has a method.

 

“Hey, so I don’t know how you take…oh.”

 

He’s asleep, spread out on his side across her mattress and drooling against her pillow. That was fast. She quietly walks over to him, leaving the Gatorade and medicine on her bedside table before tucking him into the bed and walking back out of the room, turning off the lights on her way out.

 

* * *

 

“Swan.”

 

“Love.”

 

“Emma.”

 

Her eyes pop open to see a man standing over her, something that hasn’t happened in a hell of a lot of time, and it takes only a moment before she realizes that it’s Killian…and he stayed in her apartment last night…but they didn’t sleep together. It all comes back to her as she blinks herself awake, and with the way she’s waking up, she’d think that she was the one who was passed out drunk in a snow bank and not Killian.

 

“Hey,” she yawns, sitting up on the couch and adjusting her sweatshirt so it covers the bare skin of her stomach, “you’re awake.”

 

“Uhh, yeah.” He reaches to scratch behind his ear, his gaze traveling up to the ceiling while his jaw ticks. “Swan, not that I’m not glad to be waking up in your apartment, but I’m a little bit confused.”

 

“Do you…do you not remember?”

 

“I remember pieces, but none of it is really making sense. How did I end up here?”

 

“I found you drunk in a snow bank.”

 

“Shit. Really?”

 

“Really.”

 

“Did I, uh, did I say or do anything stupid?”

 

She’s not sure what to say. Overall, he was fine, probably the nicest drunk she’s encountered in a long while, but she’s not sure if she should tell him she knows about his brother’s death. That may be too private, and she doesn’t want to pry. But she also doesn’t want to lie to him. This entire thing is weird and unexpected, and while she was kind of pissed at first, the moment she realized he was grieving all of that faded away.

 

Or most of it.

 

Her back is killing her from sleeping on the couch, so that’s going to be a memory of tonight that stays for awhile.

 

“No, no. You were fine. It’s just – you told me why you were drunk. Do you want to talk about it?”

 

“Swan, no offense, love, but I’ve embarrassed the hell out of myself to you in the past twelve hours. I don’t really wish to do it again. I fear I’m not very good at talking about it.”

 

“Well, maybe another time then.”

 

“Maybe,” he smiles, even if it’s weak. “I’m going to go home and get dressed for work. Thank you for last night. Let me know how I can repay you. I’m in your debt, love.”

 

“Don’t think anything about it. I hope today is better than yesterday.”

 

“Me, too.”

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t see Killian for four days, not even in the hallway or on the stairwells, but she can’t stop thinking about him. It’s not that she didn’t think about him before. He’s been the star of some very vivid and inappropriate (in the that’s her neighbor and a teacher inappropriate and not a kinky inappropriate but do whatever floats your boat) sexual fantasies as well as someone who’s pretty easy to talk to, but she’s never actively thought about him before…while she’s awake at least.

 

Now she can’t stop.

 

It’s ridiculous.

 

There’s a knock on her door Saturday evening, one she’s not expecting, and when she looks through the peep hole, there’s a guy with a pizza standing outside her door.

 

“I think you’ve got the wrong apartment,” she tells the guy when she opens her door. “I didn’t order anything.”

 

He looks up at her door number before looking back at her. “You’re Emma Swan in apartment 310 B?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Then this is your pizza. It’s already paid for, tip included. I was just told to give it to you even if you protest.”

 

“Um, okay,” she mumbles, taking the pizza out of his hand and taking a step back into her apartment, “have a nice night.”

 

“You too, lady.”

 

She closes the door and locks it, unsure of what’s going on, before she plops the pizza box down on her kitchen counter and opens it up as the smell of cheese wafts in the air and invades her senses. A plain pepperoni and cheese pizza. Nice. Suspicious but nice.

 

There’s a note taped to the top of the box, grease coating the paper, and when she pulls it off, it opens to neatly written words.

 

_Swan,_

_I’d like to both apologize and thank you. There are a million things you could have done differently about the other night, but you were kind beyond belief when you didn’t have to be. I don’t know what kind of pizza you like, so I got the classic. But there is stuffed crust. How could you resist that?_

_Anyways, thank you for everything. I’ll see you around._

_Killian Jones_

_Apartment 310 E_

Did the man really feel the need to put his apartment number? She knows who he is and where he lives? But it’s cute and a bit endearing, and it’s probably the reason why she walks out her front door and down the hall to his, knocking without thought of him being busy or not being home.

 

But he is home, opening the door after two knocks, like he was waiting or something, and he greets her with a bright smile and crystal blue eyes that are not hazed over by alcohol.

 

“You like pizza, Jones?”

 

“I do.”

 

“You want to come eat some? My treat.”

 

He chuckles before his lashes flutter against his cheeks. Damn, he has long eyelashes. Why do guys always have better eyelashes? That honestly seems like another injustice against women.

 

“I think that’d be nice.”

 

Killian joins her for dinner that night, and she learns more about him in two hours of pizza and beer – a singular bottle for him – than she has in her three years of casually knowing him. Turns out a guy doesn’t have a big filter around you when you’ve dragged him home drunk after being passed out in the snow. It really bonds two people.

 

Okay, so maybe not necessarily bonding.

 

But they both have the same opinions on the current plot West World – or maybe it’s a lack of a plot because they’re not really sure – and they both agree that David acts too much like a retired sixty-year-old man to be thirty. And they like the same pizza and beer, so it’s enough for them to spend two hours together on a Saturday night.

 

It’s not weird, which is the biggest thing. They’ve never spent much time alone together, or any time really when they’re both mostly sober, and she was expecting there to be awkward silences and stilted conversation…but there wasn’t.

 

At some point in the night Killian gets ahold of her phone, and when she checks it that night when she’s getting ready to go to bed in her newly washed sheets, she sees the new contact along with a picture of himself smiling down at her phone with his thumb in the air. She’s in the background, standing above him with her mouth hanging open. It’s unflattering in every way possible, but all she really cares about is how he got her phone and then figured out her password.

_ES: How did you figure out my phone password?_

 

She doesn’t even exit out of the texting app before he messages back.

 

_KJ: Wouldn’t you like to know?_

_ES: I definitely would._

_KJ: You’re an open book, darling._

_ES: Yeah, no. That’s crap. Tell me._

_KJ: Goodnight, Swan._

 

Oh, he’s just going to go to bed. He’s not going to continue this? He doesn’t want to talk more? Why does she want to talk more? What the hell is even happening?

 

Why does she care?

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t know if it’s because she doesn’t have much of a social life or if it’s because Killian doesn’t – it’s probably both – but somehow Saturday nights become their thing. Ruby is convinced they’re dating, and they’re not. Definitely not. Dating is going out to dinner or drinks. It’s not sitting in your pajamas with un-brushed hair trash talking television shows and eating junk food.

 

That’s…established relationship activities.

 

Or friendly activities. Yeah, friendly activities. That’s exactly what’s happening.

 

But then Saturday nights turns into all day Saturday and falling asleep on the couch with her head on his shoulder and their thighs pressed together without a care in the world. And then they wake up on Sunday and go out to eat breakfast all while bemoaning the sun coming out. Sometimes she’ll have to go into work, depending on her shifts, and Killian always seems to have papers to grade. He’ll often come to that station those times, his backpack full of ungraded assignments and grilled cheese from Granny’s just for her. They’d probably get a lot more done if they weren’t together as they always get distracted by something, but it makes life in the small town of Storybrooke a hell of a lot less boring.

 

She decides that she has a middle school deeply intense crush on Killian when they’re at David and Mary Margaret’s house watching March Madness. She’s just…not into sports. She likes them and thinks they can be entertaining, but she’s not about to wear another man’s jersey and get pissed over a college basketball player not shooting enough three-pointers.

 

“Oh come on,” David screams, slapping his hand against his thigh and spilling the bowl of chips he had in his lap, “how do you miss that?”

 

Killian snickers next to her, and when he wraps his arm around the back of the couch, his fingers finding her hair, she shivers at the slightest touch.

 

“Man, I love sportsball,” he jokes, his accent a poor attempt at an American one. “I like when they get the points.”

 

She chuckles beside him, a smile breaking out and lighting up her face while Killian takes a long, slow sip of his beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing when he gulps. She has to hold in her own gulp.

 

“My favorite thing is when they touch the balls with their hands.”

 

She doesn’t realize what she’s said until Killian does a literal spit take, something she’s never seen before, and bursts into the heartiest laugh she’s ever heard fall from his lips. If anything, it makes her smiles, but then he’s laughing so fiercely that he turns and buries his head at her collarbone, his whiskers burning her skin in rough patches all while his lips continuously hit against her collarbone. The vibrations of his laughter are intense enough that she feels them all the way throughout her body, and she buries her own chin against his mop of messy black hair, tears falling from her eyes.

 

“What the hell are the two of you laughing at?” David spits, and the two of them pull back with flushed cheeks and aching stomachs. They take one look at his hands placed on his hips and the genuinely upset look on his face before dissolving into fits of giggles all over again. “This is not a joking matter. Duke is losing. That’s my alma mater!”

 

They get kicked out of the apartment with five minutes left, the two of them never quite able to contain their laughter after Emma’s inadvertent hand job joke, but neither of them were really watching the game anyways. They amble back to Killian’s apartment, and when they get there, she props herself up on her island counter while he sticks a frozen pizza into the oven, setting the timer for seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds like some kind of weirdo.

 

“Why that certain amount of time?”

 

He shrugs before stepping over to her, placing his hands on her knees and spreading them further apart until he can step in between them. She closes them, squeezing his hips, and he places his hands on either side of her waist. He’s so close that she can see every detail on his face from the blue of his eyes to the scar on his cheek to the way he’s got smile lines around his eyes and how there’s ginger tints in his beard. Her breath hitches, and he chuckles, low and deep.

 

They haven’t been this close in…an hour. But where earlier they were laughing, the air light, now the room is full of tension that she wants to break into a million little pieces.

 

“It’s the perfect amount of time,” he whispers, his breath hot against her lips though they don’t touch. She shivers, and his lips twitch upward.

 

“How do you know?”

 

“It took time to learn, but after awhile, you kind of just figure these things out. I have a method.”

 

He leans forward then, crowding her in, and she lets him, allowing him further into her space until he’s just…until her space is his space.

 

She’s not sure who moves first, but she blinks and suddenly his lips are moving over hers, tentative and subtle until she opens a little wider and moves her arms to tug on his hair, pulling him impossibly closer. His lips are hungry over hers then and his whiskers are rough against her skin. When she nibbles on his bottom lip, her teeth harsh, a groan emanates from the back of his throat, and with how delectable that groan was, it takes her a moment to remember to soothe her tongue over his lip. When she does, he opens his mouth, allowing her inside, and when their tongues tangle together, she feels a mixture of headiness and happiness.

 

They pull back, but she keeps her eyes closed, not ready to look at him until her breathing and racing mind are under control. She takes a deep breath, readying herself, and opens her eyes to the most dazzling blue she’s ever seen.

 

“Hi.”

 

She chuckles, even if it’s small, before running her hands down his neck and holding them at his biceps. His found their way underneath her shirt about three minutes ago, and he still hasn’t moved them. She doesn’t really want him to.

 

“Hi. So, um, that happened.”

 

He hums, and she feels the vibrations in her lower belly. “It did.”

 

His voice is husky, broken, and she is an absolute goner for this man. “I’d like to do it again.”

 

“Me too, but I’m afraid the taste of your lips has ruined me for the pizza in the oven.”

 

“Oh wow, that was cheesy.”

 

“So is the pizza.”

 

The next time she kisses Kilian he tastes like pizza, and he was right. It doesn’t taste nearly as good as it did the first time.

 

At least at first.

 

They don’t talk about the kiss, or any of the other ones, or, frankly, the very heavy petting that went on that day, but they don’t have to. It just keeps happening. It happens in the hallway outside of their apartments, soft, quick kisses before work that make her heart flutter. It happens at the station, hard and fast, demanding kisses against the wall in her office that hides them from the rest of the station. It happens after the middle school play that he sponsors, his arm around her waist after the show where he’s greeting the parents of the children. It’s quick then, like his lips barely even touch her, but it’s not the kisses she cares about at that moment.

 

Mostly, though, it happens in one of their apartments and it’s a mixture of all of those things until one day it goes a little further and there’s a distinct lack of clothes between them while the join together in an intimacy that neither has breached in a hell of a long time. His mouth never strays far from hers, and even though they haven’t said the words, with every thrust of his hips and every whispered word of affection, she knows that they’re making love.

 

She says the words on the fourth of July, and they slip off of her tongue like they’re the most natural thing in the world.

 

He’s got the entire summer off from school, and he convinces her to take a long weekend so that they can go away together. She protests at first, not sure if she should really be leaving town on one of the busiest weeks of the year, but then he gives her these damn puppy dog eyes and bites down on her collarbone and she’s a goner.

 

So they load up into his truck, their two duffle bags in the backseat, and drive the three hours to Boothbay, pulling into the parking lot of the quaint home they’re renting for the weekend. Everything here is perfect, like something you’d see on a postcard, but then Killian takes her sailing, just the two of them, and she knows that it’s what’s perfect.

 

He tells her that Liam taught him how to sail, and when his eyes get distant for a few seconds, she lets him have his moment. They know each other pretty well, but there’s still some darkness that each of them hold that they haven’t told the other. She wants to tell him about all of her scars. She isn’t scared to, something she’s never experienced with anyone else. It’s just…she doesn’t need to. With them, everything seems to flow naturally, like the water beneath the boat, and things seem to slip out a little at a time.

 

At the right times.

 

“Come here, love,” Killian calls, waving his hands so quickly that she knows she needs to hurry, walking over to him as quickly as she can even if she doesn’t have her sea legs quite yet.

 

“What?” she asks, stepping over to him only for him to pull her in front of his body and push her up against the wheel. “Killian, what are you doing?”

 

He wraps his arms around her and steps closer, the heat of his body rivaling the heat of the July sun. “I’m teaching you how to sail. My girlfriend needs to know how.”

 

“Why?”

 

His neck nuzzles on top of hers, the pinpricks shooting through her skin. “Because it’s a good skill to have, and if you can teach me how to get out of the cell in the station, I can teach you this.”

 

“Good. So I can escape from jail and then sail away by boat.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

They manage to make it a little further out in the bay, the sun beginning to set around them, and as all of their surroundings are coated in a bright orange, the words fall from her tongue as easily as if she were telling him she’s going to be late for dinner.

 

Which happens a lot.

 

“I love you,” she speaks, no tremor in her voice while she looks out on the horizon.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Good, because I damn well love you.”

 

He tugs on the string of her bikini, pulling her around and into him as their lips crash together in a dance more familiar than anything else in her life. Her skin prickles, and it’s got nothing to do with the way the sun has been beating down upon it all day.

 

“So a woman who can sail and who loves me? I don’t think I could do better if I tried.”

 

“Oh, I know you couldn’t.”

 

They get into their first big fight in October, and it all stems from the fact that she got distracted and forgot to tell Killian that she’d picked up an extra shift to help out David. She was supposed to come to his class and help with a project, something about career day, and she’d let down both he and the kids. It’s not the biggest thing in the world, and it’s definitely not one of the better reasons to pick a fight with your significant other, but it happened to them. She felt awful for forgetting. There were harsh words and passive aggressive statements until they got all of their anger out and were actually able to sit down and talk to each other, explaining misunderstandings and mistakes and the reasons as to why they each got upset. She’s never had a relationship like that before, where you talk instead of running out the door, and knowing that neither of them were going to leave was everything.

 

“Can I be honest with you?” he asks her later, their comfortable silence in the afterglow of their make-up ending while her hand pauses its ministrations in his hair.

 

“Always, Killian.”

 

He rolls in her lap so that he’s looking up at her, his lashes practically hitting his eyebrows. “I’m ashamed of how we got here.”

 

Something drops in her stomach, like a heavy weight, and she has to keep the emotion that’s suddenly lodged in her throat from escaping. He’s ashamed? Is he ashamed of her? He doesn’t…does he not want to be with her? Was it the fight? Did they really not resolve things? Every comfort she was just feeling begins to be tugged away by demons that still reside inside of her until she hears Killian’s voice again.

 

“Hey, hey, hey,” he soothes, reaching up and cupping her face, his thumb moving back and forth against the apple of her cheek, “what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Darling, honesty remember? That’s what we were just talking about.”

 

“You’re…you’re ashamed of me?”

 

His eyes go wide, but she can’t look at them, can’t look at the blue. She closes her eyes and shuts the world away while shutting Killian out. She feels the mattress move underneath her, and the warmth of Killian leave her until suddenly it’s so overwhelming that she feels as if she’s been set aflame. Calloused fingers touch her skin, and soft, warm lips touch her, a salty tear she didn’t know escaped from her eyes having landed on their joined lips.

 

When Killian pulls back, she finally opens her eyes to see the concern etched in his features. He smiles softly, sadly, and then he wipes the salt from her cheeks.

 

“I could never be ashamed of you.”

 

He adjusts his legs then, spreading them so that hers rest between his and he sits on her thighs while pressing them together.

 

“But you said – ”

 

“ – that I’m ashamed of how we got here. I’m ashamed that I got drunk and you had to keep me from dying on a sidewalk in the snow. We should have become friends some other way, should have fallen in love another way.”

 

“I’m…I’m confused.”

 

“I love you,” he chuckles, leaning forward and resting his forehead against hers. Her heart is fluttering, the beat quicker than it’s ever been, and she’s happy. Confused as hell but happy. His hands move from her face to her arms, running them up and down to soothe her. “I love you, and you are the goddamn best thing to ever happen to me. But I wish you hadn’t seen me at such a low point. I wish that I could have been better for you from the very beginning. We’ve never…we’ve never talked about that night that shines me as a rotten human.”

 

“We didn’t have to. It was a bad night. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”

 

“But I feel like you should know how broken I am. If you’re going to love me, you should know the broken pieces.”

 

“I love the broken pieces that I already know. I love _you_.”

 

“But Emma, I – ”

 

“Killian, listen to me,” she urges, her own hand finding his face, the whiskers scratching her palm, “you lost the most important person in the world to you in a horrible accident. He was taken from you, and it’s not fair. Not a bit of it is. You’re allowed to feel that pain, that hurt. It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human.”

 

“I don’t like feeling that way.”

 

“No one does.” She finds his hands, intertwining their fingers together, a perfect fit, and squeezing. “But you don’t have to do it alone. Not anymore. Next year, if you want, I’ll fall down in the pile of snow with you.”

 

He chuckles, a singular tear falling from his cheek. She wipes it away in the same way he had earlier. “I’d like that. I’d like for you to always be by my side. I’d like to always be by yours.”

 

* * *

 

 The next year they don’t fall into the snow together on the anniversary of Liam’s death, but she does hold Killian as he sobs at three in the morning. She knows that most of it is pain from feeling like he’s not strong enough. But grieving is human and loving someone is helping them grieve when you don’t understand their pain. Maybe it’s helping especially when you don’t understand the pain.

 

It’s the first year he’s had someone to help him with this day, second if you count the year before, and she cries her own tears thinking of how alone Killian felt for so long. She felt that way too, but she never had anyone to lose. She can’t imagine how it must have felt to love someone so fiercely and then to lose them. But then she thinks of how much she loves Killian, of how she’d barely survive if she lost him, and though it’s not the same, it’s still altogether heartbreaking.

 

The year after that the grieving is quieter, and it happens in their house down by the water. They’re in the midst of moving in, boxes of her things mixed with his things. After awhile, their apartments began to mix together, her things trailing between the apartments until the two were perfect blends of each other. So they’d decided to move into one place. It helps that they now had the same last name and matching rings on their fingers. It makes paperwork easier, though that’s about the last reason on their imaginary list of reasons that they decided to commit to each other in that way.

 

So they are together in every sense of the word, and when Killian needs a moment on that day, he sinks to the floor and closes his eyes for a few fleeting minutes. Her hand finds his, and they sit in silence all while her thumb runs over his knuckles.

 

“I love you more than anything, sweetheart,” he whispers, the timber of his voice rough and low.

 

“And I love you. You okay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah.” He shakes his head before bringing their joined hands to his lips and kissing right above her rings. “I just needed a moment to remember.”

 

“Liam?”

 

“Aye, and all of this. I don’t want to forget a thing.”

 

The next year the grieving is mixed in with a hell of a lot of screaming, a nearly broken hand, and the happiest moment of either of their lives. Like the fates somehow aligned, she gives birth to a little girl two minutes past midnight the day after the anniversary of Liam’s death. Killian was convinced their daughter would come on January eighth, but she’s as stubborn as the two of them and decided to come into the world on January ninth.

 

“You did so good, love,” Killian promises her while her body screams almost as loudly as their daughter. His lips find her sweaty forehead at the same time she’s handed a squirming red baby, and for a moment, she doesn’t feel anything but happiness.

 

“Thank you for being by my side.”

 

“Always.”


End file.
